(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to automotive telematics that deals mainly with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for automotive vehicles, with emphasis given on such fast-evolving technologies as encryption, identifications, authentications, vehicle electronics, telemetry, touchscreen display, GPS technology and location-specific digital transactions.
(2) Description of the Background Art
The ever-worsening traffic congestion around the globe has pervasively wrought havoc on modern urban and rural living, spreading its ripple effects on all walks of life. A traffic surge, among other things, is a prime mover behind the traffic congestion. Categorically, parameters of traffic surges can be largely grouped into Traffic Surge Boosters (TSBoo) and Traffic Surge Buffers (TSBuff). Some parameters may clearly represent either TSBoo or TSBuff, opposed to others that are overlapped in both categories and susceptible to surrounding conditions.
Parameters associated with car parks and local events, for example, may keep hanging in the balance of TSBoo and TSBuf, depending on the timing and sequencing thereof. On the other hand, desolate road conditions and bad weather, like rains, should work as TSBoo all the time. To help optimize and streamline the urban traffic flow by regulating anticipated and unanticipated traffic surges, the above-mentioned susceptibility should be under control to turn it into TSBuff to a maximum extent possible.
To do such a challenging task of minimizing TSBoo, data mining efficiency related to traffic data events without intruding on privacy, coupled with triaging funds and resources in an optimal sequencing, is imperative. Thus, a primal focus should be on car parks and tollgates to minimize TSBoo by harnessing both the vehicle traffic and traffic data events that would otherwise be left underutilized. At the same time, mobile payments at locations other than car parks and tollgates, so far as drivers and vehicles are involved, are given as much focus in order to generate an all-encompassing solution to the traffic congestion as a whole.
Some current gap-filler technology adopted for toll collection, for example, is only spurring the devastating entropies of traffic safety and conveniences worldwide. It is because such parameters as TSBoo and TSBuff are intertwined, intermingled, hybridized and mutated so much so that the current ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) technology combining cash and electronic collection does no longer stay fit to solve the anomalies arising out of them but only ends up the opposite of what was intended. In other words, behavioral changes of both consumers and motorists are hardly kept up with by any new technological breakthroughs due to the persistent aftermarket prowess of obsolescent technology.
Ironically enough, convenience of today is rapidly becoming the root cause for entropies of tomorrow. Some realistic technological compromises and tradeoffs may appear to be good up to a certain level, but may stop working after reaching that specific level. After that level, a technological breakthrough requiring a paradigm shift is a must-come solution, since further growing ramifications from those compromises and tradeoffs may eventually lead up to a catch-22 situation. There is a British adage: “You can't jump over a ditch with two leaps.” This adage implies why at a certain point of time, a disruptive solution is imperative and why this invention seeks for a disruptive solution to the conventional technology. DriveOn Pay™ has reversed the idée fixe that merchants should carry paying terminals, but has sought for a paradigm shift requiring Users to carry paying terminals, aimed at a random and mass-production method of payment processing, instead of the current serial processing that calls for a long queue in front of cashiers. It enables motorists to pay behind the wheels at any vehicle speed by improving toll collection speeds by a factor of 32.5 over the current ETC combined with cash collect.
The invention is designed to wirelessly pay not only tolls but also parking fees and do shopping on the go. The wireless paying process can be made behind the wheel while you are driving at a full speed of 80 mph, or are in a car park, or cruising down a shopping arcade in search of a parking lot. You can make the said mobile payments around the clock regardless of a cashier being handy or being attentive or watchful. You are free from such hassles like showing your ID as well, like when presenting a credit card to a cashier at a storefront.
This is a whole lot different than such wireless paying devices on mobile phones as Pay by Touch, Touch and Pay, and TouchPay or whatever they are named. Wireless paying by mobile phones is based on an infrared beam technology, is not menu-driven, and is effective only within an arm's reach. On the other hand, the present invention can pay within a 5-mile range wirelessly at practically any vehicle speeds, with the User-centric features like menu-driven payment options.
The Invention aims to provide a more ergonomic and overarching solution, based on the following needs:                1) To address the worsening traffic congestion, primarily focused on car parks and tollgates, in a bid to strive for a freedom from this man-made affliction.        2) To meet the potential demand for non-Internet, hassle-free, phishing-free, and wireless payment system on the go, mostly behind the wheel and to create a fourth dimension to e-commerce, e-marketing, and e-advertising, adding a spontaneity and JIT feature. Mobile payment solutions like this will certainly make up the next wave of JIT e-Commerce within the next decade.        3) To create a new cost-conscious culture of ticket-free, biometrics-free “Remote Check-In or Admissions” for airports, ball parks, and other public gatherings. This is aimed at primarily eliminating long waiting queues in front of theaters, ball parks, rock concerts, trade shows, and for security checks at airports, for the purpose of enhancing consumer convenience and saving administrative costs. And secondarily at reducing the waste of resources, like materials and labor, the costs of biometric data updates, and the growing overheads.        4) To facilitate counterterrorism screening and alleviate security threats and security costs by providing easier access to identifying the security-related problem spots beforehand or afterwards in a super-fast way. The ECHEOLON may globally monitor all the electronic communications but can hardly track vehicles used for crimes and terrors unless those vehicles use any electronic communication devices or whatsoever. DriveOn Pay™ enables vehicle data to be disclosed and collected at certain locations like tollgates, car parks, shopping centers, airports, tourist places and expos, with the consent of motorists, which means heading off any privacy concerns.                    In other words, DriveOn Pay™ can pinpoint the more localized attention to any security problem spots and detect any security vulnerability. The soaring security costs due to the 9/11 of 2001 have lately sent major airliners teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, while low-cost airliners start mushrooming. But these kinds of debacle or shakeout seemingly have some latent risks that will soon come to hit flight passengers harder. It is pointed out that security costs and related expenses have pushed the overheads for airline industry globally by 20%.                        
Electronic gadgetry and gizmos have added a new dimension to modern comforts, particularly in vehicles. However, they have in part created a realm of risks, dangers and discomforts in terms of Driver Distraction, due to the lack of multidisciplinary design optimization resulting from the centrifugal tendency of automotive gadgetry. Nevertheless, the present invention can help explore the possibility of integrating mutually exclusive automotive gadgetry by giving a mobile payment solution to the said gadgetry.
The present invention will soon prove it has explored the core value of emerging needs of automotive gadgetry in consideration of the growing interdisciplinary “blind spots” and the emerging multidisciplinary coordination needs. The May 29, 2006 article of New York Times elaborates on a recent poll by Harris Interactive, a research firm, the gap between the number of bills paid by check and the number paid online has closed significantly in 2005. More than 37 percent of bills are paid by check and 35 percent are paid online. The remaining 28 percent are paid with cash, debit cards or other payment methods. Given that trend, according to the newspaper, web payments could surpass checks over 2007. In 2005, 46 percent of bills were paid by check, and 25 percent online.
If this trend were any indication, online payments behind the wheel at a full speed would soon be a top issue in the auto-mobile design, surpassing the mutually exclusive gadgets like GPS navigators, satellite radios and MP3 players. For the same reason, the online payment platform envisioned by the present invention will find a rationale for accommodating and integrating all the mutually exclusive features of the above gadgets into an all-in-one device.
The ostensible mutual exclusivity lying between said automotive gadgets may turn into another hidden face of a common thread linking all of them when an inherent threshold is crossed over. In other words, they may appear to be mutually exclusive initially when they are lacking some common grounds, but later on they tend to shift to a unity if some compelling circumstances that might have hoodwinked them are eliminated. The super-speed wireless payment platform behind the wheel is expected to turn the mutual exclusivity into a unity. This is what this invention aims at.
Ultimately, car parks and tollgates are the main arena where each motorist struggles and competes fiercely for the best in terms of time and money at every moment. Harnessing motorists' behaviors in relation to car parks and tollgates can only find an optimal cure for the best part of traffic congestion, if the concept of “triage” is to work here.
To reduce road anxiety causing speeding, road rages and fatal accidents, tollgate passage should be smooth and fast without stopping, slowdowns or traffic snarls. Rush-hour queues at tollgates stretch over 5 to 10 miles or longer under a scorching sun, with vehicles creeping at 5 mph. Traffic congestion at tollgates alone will remain to be a top agenda item for the following reasons:                1) More gridlocks and tollgate slowdowns are likely to increase in the next decades. Worldwide car density is growing at an annual rate of 50 million, based on the year 2000, and will grow faster in the years to come, foreboding an exponential growth of the traffic congestion. Motorists are faced with more sacrifices at tollgates in terms of gasoline and time henceforward.        2) Growing waste of energy: In the worst case scenario, an on-going doomsaying about a possible depletion of crude oil reserves might come true in 2025-2030.        3) Environmental problems, like global warming, will be a life-and-death issue in another decade, unless greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles are under control. It is a hard fact that running vehicles account for 63% of the CO2 gas emissions over the world, and that the tollgates are responsible for most of the emissions.        
At most tollgates, cash collect plus RFID technology is currently used as means of collecting tolls. Long story short, these two methods are not supposed to mix at all for the following reasons:                1) The current mix of cash collect and RFID technology is self-contradictory and can cause a set of never-ending weakest links and a dilemma. Under the current system, motorists are required to choose from cash lanes, RFID lanes and carpool lanes, thereby causing abrupt lane-changing needs to end up in escalating traffic snarls, slowdowns and stops. If both toll booths and the need for lane configurations were eliminated, then there would be no traffic snarls, no slowdown and no stops at tollgates. Overtweaking the current system would lead to more User-unfriendly solutions, ending up an escalation of the scope of entropy.        2) It is absolutely impossible to have 100% of local motorists sign up for prepaid accounts in support of RFID technology including FasTrak and EZ-Pass. Even if it were legislatively mandated, then it would be impossible to enforce all the prepaid accounts to stay in good shape and free of any NSF (non-sufficient fund) situations. Besides, there are non-local motorists, including border-crossing aliens and tourists.        3) Toll booths are a major drag for traffic, and they must be eliminated. Meantime, the booth-free toll-collecting system on toll roads appears to be unmanned on the surface, but it needs a lot of back-office manpower for billing. Even worse, it comes with a fail ratio of 15% plus a considerable misreading ratio. The unmanned toll collection system on toll roads is not very efficient, conditional only to a low traffic volume, and will not justify when the traffic volume grows over a certain level, like a metropolitan volume. The toll roads are currently using ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras and RFID transponder chips and readers. Nevertheless, toll roads are expected to come to 30 in number sooner or later in the United States.        4) In some states like Florida and California, vehicles with RFID transponders are randomly monitored unbeknownst to the motorists, raising privacy issues. Traffic data are critical to forecasting and optimizing the traffic flows, and real-time traffic data events should be watched, monitored and fed into databases without causing any privacy concerns. The current system is outdated for this type of data mining scenarios.        5) To help even out lopsided traffic loads on certain roads, voluntary acts by motorists of bypassing certain routes during specific hours of the day, days of the week or the seasons, should be encouraged by implementing a differential toll system. The current system of toll collection does not fit for this type of traffic optimization schemes.        6) To help cover runaway cost overruns, such extra funding sources as promotional toll sales and special-purpose fundraising that can be done on the road, are a newly sought-for strategy. But the current system is hopelessly lacking any means of introducing such extra funding schemes.        
Motorists are entitled to freedom of choice, when paying tolls or whatsoever. The current toll collection system mandates a limited choice of the following:                1) cash        2) automatic debit from a prepaid account linked to RFID transponders.        
Even toll roads come with a narrow choice of the following:                1) automatic debit from a prepaid account linked to RFID transponder chips        2) a bill in the mail.        
Each motorist's divergent financial situation requires a wider selection of choice. The divergent nature of each motorist's financial situation can only cause a yawning gap between a forced selection of a limited choice and their divergent payment means.
Generally, giving a wider selection of choice will give more chances of looking into consumer behaviors and the shifting tendency thereof, thereby enabling more efficiency and consumer-friendly solutions to be gained in more constructive ways in the future by catching up with the changing trends over time.
The basic approach is to seek non sequitur in getting a solution to a hybridizing and mutating aspects of behavioral shifts in human communications via wireless technology, focusing on User-centric options, insomuch as payment transactions are ultimately a form of formal human communications. In support of this view, the following news excerpt (May 2006) needs to be appreciated:
Quote
There are two principal reasons that TV stations are seeking to broaden their horizons. One is “consumers will increasingly choose what they want to see, when they want to see it, on whatever device they want to see it,” said Alan Frank, president and chief executive at the Post-Newsweek Stations division of the Washington Post Company.
Unquote
The present invention should be embodied in the form of a fixture on vehicle dashboard instead of being embedded into mobile phones. DriveOn Pay™ should be a fail-safe operation around the clock, not allowing any single failure. On the other hand, mobile phones are handy, but are not suitable for fail-safe DriveOn Pay™ operations for the following reasons:                1) Mobile phones are elusive from time to time, when a User is in a desperate need. That's because even occasionally, they might happen to be left behind somewhere else. Besides, the chances are that coincidentally the phone battery is dead, when you need the phone desperately.        2) Mobile phones are primarily for voice communications, and may put Users on a collision course more often than not when used as all-in-one devices for mobile TV, streaming video, nomadic Internet connections, digital cameras and live traffic newscast. In other words, an incoming voice call can easily interrupt other all-in-one features mentioned above.        3) Mobile phones are insecure from hackers and malware threats, and are used for more informal occasions. Especially, motorcyclists wouldn't welcome mobile phones as a wireless toll-paying device that can be used while running at a full speed.        
Nonetheless, mobile phones may be useful as a supporting device for some situations like: one-time emergency use to cope with thefts or failures of VIMO; and when used as a carrying device of Ticket ID for Remote Check-In.
Major benefits of this invention can be enumerated on both the national and global perspectives as follows:                1) Resource saving effects, including petroleum and trees        2) Labor saving from unmanned operations        3) Environmental protection, which will remain a top global issue in the next decades.        4) Travel safety, including transport security, and comforts in felicific calculus        5) Phishing-free JIT (Just In Time) e-commerce on the go—JITeCGO        6) Synergistic effect on local industry and economy through optimal reallocation of resources        7) Improved quality of life and new cost-conscious and bandwidth-intensive culture.        
In conclusion, the prior art made of record and not relied upon is pertinent to the present invention as follows:                a. Breed, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2005/0060069 A1 (detailed vehicle system includes toll management).        b. Belani, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2007/0050240 A1 (wireless network provides parking guidance for driver).        c. Ji, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2007/0061155 A1 (WiMAX-network-compatible system includes toll and parking billing).        